It has been three months since I've found a 90% silver "ender" in a box of bank-rolled half dollars. My luck changed today when I purchased two boxes from a bank where I've often acquired boxes that contain collection dumps. I saw the reverse side of a Benjamin
Franklin half dollar in one roll when I opened the first box. Flipping over the rolls in the second box revealed the obverse of a 1942 Liberty
Walking half dollar.
The nature of coins in the first box were very odd. Most of them were so heavily worn that no reeding remained on their rims. The edges of the five 90% silver half dollars I found in that box (which included a second Benji) were easy to recognize: they resembled the edges of
Barber half dollars that on YouTube videos CRHs have documented finding. The three worn 1964
Kennedy half dollars I found in the box are very unattractive examples of that coin. It was difficult to identify the two 40% silver
Kennedy half dollars that I also found because only a thin silver line was visible on their heavily-worn edges. But I was reasonably pleased that the first box contained five 90% silver half dollars and two 40% silver coins.
I hoped that the box with the Walking Liberty ender would be just as good -- but it wasn't. I found only two more silver coins -- a 1964
Kennedy half dollar and one coin that contains 40% silver. More often than not I have found fewer silver half dollars than expected in boxes that contain a silver "ender":
e.g., I anticipated finding ca. 10 silver coins in each of these boxes (since I examined 10% of the coins checking the ends of each roll). But I found only 10 silver coins in both of them.
Posted 05/24/2025 10:32 am
